Brown Mountain lights

The Brown Mountain lights are unexplained lights reported near Brown Mountain in North Carolina, with the earliest published accounts dating to around 1910, just as electric lighting was spreading through the surrounding area. In 1922 a United States Geological Survey scientist, George R. Mansfield, used a map and an alidade telescope to show that many of the observed lights were in fact trains, car headlights and brush fires, a finding that quieted much of the public concern at the time.